Signapse receives £2 million seed funding to improve accessibility for the deaf

The startup Signapse has received £2 million in a new round of funding. This funding will help drive the development of AI-powered British Sign Language translation and improve global accessibility for the deaf.

Prague, June 6, 2024: Signapse, an AI-powered sign language translation company, has closed a £2 million seed funding round. Of this, £1.5 million comes from investors and £500,000 from the UK government. The funding round was led by Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund, with participation from other investors including the Royal Association for Deaf People, Empirical Ventures, CEAS Investments and FSE Group.

I couldn't be more excited and proud of this next step in our growth. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to develop a transformative product. I would like to thank everyone who is and has been part of our great team.

Sally Chalk, CEO and co-founder of Signapse

Use of funds

The new funds will be used to improve accessibility for the deaf. Specifically, Signapse will focus on the following areas:

• Expanding the video translation market to improve accessibility for the deaf globally.
• Building an unrestricted British Sign Language (BSL) translation service that can translate any English sentence structure into BSL.
• Improving the quality of Signapse's AI-generated sign language videos.

This is an important milestone for Signapse to expand our AI messages from limited discourse areas such as transportation to more open markets such as website and video translation.

Ben Saunders, CTO and co-founder of Signapse

Signapse is a sign language translation software company that uses Generative AI to provide photorealistic and accurate translations to improve accessibility for the deaf community. The company aims to make all of the world's digital information, currently available in written and audible form, automatically available in sign language.

Over the last two years, Signapse has used Generative AI to create 5,000 BSL train announcements a day across the UK and delivered over 4,000 manual BSL translations for website and video clients. Recent projects include providing accessibility for the deaf in transportation companies such as LNER train stations in the UK and CVG airport in the US.